Articles written by Elliot Spagat

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A Southern California ministry whose leaders are charged with using deadbolt locks to detain homeless residents and making them turn over panhandling money was no fly-by-night operation. Imperial Valley Ministries was known in the...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Four days after a man killed 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand, court documents show a San Diego college student expressed regret in a text message that he missed watching the livestream video of the attack and praised the...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — More than 900 children, including babies and toddlers, were separated from their parents at the border in the year after a judge ordered the practice be sharply curtailed, the American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday in a legal...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A new policy to deny asylum to anyone who shows up on the Mexican border after traveling through another country threatens to exacerbate overcrowding at severely strained U.S. immigration detention centers and makeshift holding...

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Hundreds of immigrants showed up at border crossings Tuesday in hopes of getting into the U.S. but faced the likelihood of being turned away under a new Trump administration asylum rule that upends long-standing protections f...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — An appeals court on Wednesday upheld a freeze on Pentagon money to build a border wall with Mexico, casting doubt on President Donald Trump's ability to make good on a signature campaign promise before the 2020 election. A divided...

"Inhumane." ''Shameful." ''Intolerable." ''Brutal." Mounting revelations about squalid and dangerously overcrowded conditions at Border Patrol holding centers have fueled public outrage heading into the Fourth of July weekend, with protesters taking...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump from building key sections of his border wall with money secured under his declaration of a national emergency, delivering what may prove a temporary setback on one of his high...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Donald Trump is moving fast to spend billions of dollars to build a wall on the Mexican border with money secured under his declaration of a national emergency, but he first must get past the courts. On Friday, a...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — After a 19-year-old gunman fired at least eight rounds into a California synagogue, he stopped to fumble with his semiautomatic rifle and then fled with 50 unused bullets, prosecutors said Tuesday. In his first court appearance, Jo...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Trump administration wants up to two years to find potentially thousands of children who were separated from their families at the border before a judge halted the practice last year, a task that it says is more laborious than...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Border agents have been told to explicitly target Spanish speakers and migrants from Latin America in carrying out a Trump administration program requiring asylum seekers wait in Mexico, according to memos obtained by The Associate...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A jackhammer reduced prototypes of President Donald Trump's prized border wall into piles of rubble Wednesday, a quick ending to an experiment that turned into a spectacle at times. The four concrete and four steel panels, spaced...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — In Washington, it's all about the wall. At the border, it's only part of the story. Border authorities are struggling with outdated facilities ill-equipped to handle the growing increase in family migrants, resulting in immigrants...

By, Associated Press TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Thousands of Central Americans journeying toward the United States were 2,500 miles from their destination in October when they reached a moment of decision: Should they press on toward the U.S. border?...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just 7 years old, Jackeline Caal was picked up by U.S. authorities with her father and other migrants this month in a remote stretch of New Mexico desert. Some seven hours later, she was put on a bus to the nearest Border Patrol...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — No criminal charges will be filed against any of the 42 people associated with a caravan of Central American migrants who were arrested in a clash that ended with U.S. authorities firing tear gas into Mexico to counter rock...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — President Donald Trump is strongly defending the U.S. use of tear gas at the Mexico border to repel a crowd of migrants that included angry rock-throwers and barefoot, crying children. On Tuesday, U.S. authorities lowered the...

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — With about 3,000 Central American migrants having reached the Mexican border across from California and thousands more anticipated, the mayor of Tijuana said Friday that the city was preparing for an influx that will last at...

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Migrants in a caravan of Central Americans arrived in Tijuana by the hundreds Wednesday, getting their first glimpse of the robust U.S. military presence that awaits them after President Donald Trump ordered thousands of...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — President Donald Trump tweeted an ad that blames Democrats for allowing a Mexican man who was in the U.S. illegally to kill two police officers in Northern California in 2014 in methamphetamine-fueled attacks. Luis Bracamontes was...

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Former President Barack Obama said Saturday that November midterm elections would give Americans "a chance to restore some sanity in our politics," taking another swipe at his successor as he raises his profile campaigning...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A federal judge on Friday said the Trump administration was solely responsible for reuniting hundreds of children who remain separated from the parents after being split at the U.S.-Mexico border, puncturing a government plan that...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Trump administration said Thursday that more than 1,800 children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border have been reunited with parents and sponsors but hundreds remain apart, signaling a potentially long wait for anguished famili...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A federal judge on Friday commended Trump administration efforts to reunify young children and families separated at the border but also said he plans to watch closely as a deadline approaches involving older children. U.S....